War of the Worlds

by Adam J. Whitlatch

  “Whoa, Lieutenant,” the man shouted. He pointed his Thompson’s barrel skyward. “It’s me!”

  Chen slumped against the Spartan. “Damn it, McCredie.”

  McCredie knelt beside her and grinned. “Just like Boston. Eh, Lieutenant?”

  “Shut up, Sergeant!”

  Something wet dripped onto her head, and Chen looked up. Viscous, green blood dripped from a crack in the Martian tripod’s cowl. A fat, smelly drop fell onto her forehead, and Chen swept it off with the back of her glove. The machine lay across the Spartan. There was no hope of getting it back on its feet, not that they’d have time before the others arrived to finish them off, anyway.

  Chen edged around the corner again and looked out. There were two tripods a couple hundred yards away and gaining ground.

  “Where’s your Spartan?” Chen said to McCredie.

  McCredie pointed over her shoulder. “Over there. It’s no good. They melted her right leg clean off.”

  Leg?

  Chen turned. “Erikson, how’s your leg?”

  Erikson gripped his thigh. “I think it’s broken, sir.”

  His trousers were soaked with blood, and Chen could clearly see the tear in the fabric and the jagged tip of bone poking through.

  “Yeah,” Chen said. “I think you might be right.”

  Erikson managed a weak laugh and adjusted his broken spectacles.

  Chen turned to McCredie. “Where’s Kingsley?”

  McCredie pointed. Chen followed his gaze and saw a smoking Hermes resting on its haunches. In the pilot’s seat, slumped over the mounted machine gun, was Kingsley’s smoking corpse.

  “Damn it!” Chen banged the back of her head against Bonaparte’s hull and instantly regretted it as new waves of pain shot through her skull. As she rubbed her sore spot, she noticed movement across the bay. A battlecruiser steamed toward the city.

  She pointed. “Look out there.”

  McCredie looked in the direction she was pointing, squinted, and raised the binoculars hanging from his neck.

  “I thought all the cruisers bought it when those crazy Martian planes showed up,” he said.

  McCredie stared, focusing the lenses.

  “It’s the Thunder Child II,” he said, lowering the glasses.

  “Thunder Child?” Chen said. “What are they doing here? They’re supposed to be in Boston.”

  “They must have responded to the old man’s distress call before Marty jammed long-range communications.”

  “Well, they’re in range of our comms now,” Chen said. “Get on the horn, and tell them to take out the bridge.”

  “Sir?”

  “Do it, McCredie,” Chen said.

  “Yes, sir!” McCredie climbed into Bonaparte’s open hatch.

  *****

  “Captain on the bridge!”

  Captain Wodensen stepped over the threshold and nodded to his first mate, Mister Steakley. The bridge crew did not acknowledge him as protocol dictated. Instead, they all stared through the window at the horror that lay before them. Swarms of Martian fighters buzzed around the A.R.E.S. central tower like insects.

  “My god,” the radar operator said. “Look at it.”

  “Captain,” the radioman called. “I’m receiving a distress call.”

  Wodensen crossed the deck in three long strides. “A.R.E.S. Base?”

  “Negative, Sir.”

  “On speakers.”

  The radioman flicked a switch, and Wodensen leaned over the console, brushing the man aside. “This is Captain George Wodensen. Identify yourself.”

  “Thunder Child, this is Spartan unit ‘Hell Hounds’ requesting immediate assistance,” the caller said. “We are pinned down and unable to complete our mission. We need you to blow the Jefferson Bridge. Now!”

  “And why would I do that, son?” Wodensen said.

  “Open your goddamn eyes, Thunder Child!” the caller said. “You see what’s happening up here? New York’s going to be under new management unless you bring this goddamn bridge down!”

  Wodensen squinted. The telltale green bursts of Martian heat rays flared within the dense haze.

  “Are you there, Thunder Child?”

  “Stand by.” Wodensen turned to the tactical officer. “Mister Foster, how long until the bridge is within range of our guns?”

  “Three minutes, Captain.”

  Wodensen looked again at the besieged A.R.E.S. base and the growing column of tripods marching across the bridge.

  Heaven help him if he was wrong….

  *****

  “They’re coming!” McCredie said as he emerged from the Spartan’s hatch. “We’ve got three minutes to get off the bridge before they blow it all to hell. Give me your hand, Erikson.”

  Erikson took McCredie’s hand and pulled himself up. He stifled a scream as he instinctively tried to use his wounded leg. McCredie draped the private’s arm over his shoulders.

  Chen turned to look at the tripods, which were close enough now that she could hear the whining of their mechanical joints. She looked at her watch.

  “We never got that order,” she said.

  McCredie took one halting step with Erikson. He gawked at the lieutenant. “Come again?”

  “Three minutes is more than enough time for these bastards to get across,” she said. “We have to hold them here until the ship arrives.”

  “She’s right,” Erikson said, his voice soft and weak.

  McCredie sighed and lowered Erikson to the ground. “How do you propose we do that?”

  “I’m going for Kingsley’s gun.” Chen broke into a run. “Cover me.”

  Chen counted the precious seconds as she sprinted toward the downed scout. One, one thousand… two, one thousand… three, one thousand…. She knew there was no hope of them getting off this bridge alive. Not with Erikson’s leg. Seven, one thousand… eight, one thousand….

  The smell of burning meat churned her stomach as she came upon the Hermes. She climbed one of the legs, and her lip curled in disgust as she stared into the empty eye sockets of Kingsley’s grinning skull. She grabbed the corpse’s shoulder and peeled it off the fifty-cal. Kingsley’s body slumped back against the pilot’s seat, cooked from the waist up, but perfectly intact below.

  Chen choked back the bile rising in her throat and pulled the cotter pin from the restraining bolt locking the machine gun in place.

  “C’mon,” she growled. “C’mon!”

  A heat ray streaked over her head, and McCredie returned fire. Chen pulled the fifty-cal free from its mount and framed the Martian in the crosshairs. The M2 kicked like a mule, but her shot struck the machine’s torso. As she feared, the bullets did nothing against the alien armor. The tripod fired again, and Bonaparte exploded.

  “Erikson! McCredie!” Chen stood atop the downed Hermes and opened fire, spraying the tripod’s cowl with lead. “You son of a bitch!”

  The tripod lashed out with its tentacles, but Chen leapt from the Hermes, narrowly avoiding the barbs. She tucked and rolled as she hit the ground and scrambled to her feet, firing over her shoulder and trailing spent shell casings as she ran.

  The Martian fired, striking the Hermes and igniting the fuel. The scout tripod exploded and threw Chen off her feet. The gun fell from her grip and slid across the bridge. She half-ran, half-crawled after the weapon, but a heat ray struck in front of her. Chunks of concrete and dust rained down, and she lost her bearings as she ran out of the cloud.

  Chen coughed and blinked the dust from her eyes, and when she opened them, a spiked foot taller than her slammed into the concrete a dozen yards in front of her. She ran her tongue over her teeth and spat a mouthful of blood onto the pavement, along with one of her incisors.

  The tripod’s heat ray cannon glowed.

  “Wait…” Chen drew her sidearm. “I’m not… finished… with you yet.”

  She fired three shots at the Martian. The heat ray fired, and Chen sidestepped the blast, running toward the alien fighting machine
. She fired again, and again, until the pistol clicked empty. The tripod howled triumphantly, and another appeared behind it.

  Chen threw the pistol down and smiled. “I guess you got me, Marty.”

  The heat ray glowed.

  Chen looked down at her watch and heard the distant boom of the Thunder Child II’s guns. “But I got you, too.”

  Fire erupted behind the Martians, and the bridge quaked, throwing Chen to the ground. She heard a second explosion behind her, and the ground fell away beneath her. As she fell, Lieutenant Chen smiled and gave the tripod the finger… just before it was engulfed in an expanding ball of hellfire.

  Chapter Twenty

  A.R.E.S.

  Molten metal dripped from the door. Sakai glared at the spot, his rage burning even hotter than the steel. Pinpricks of green light shone through tiny breaks, casting an eerie hue over the soldiers.

  A sizable section of glowing slag fell to the floor, casting a beam of blinding sunlight onto Sakai. The men held their breaths as a shadow fell over the rough opening, plunging them into darkness again.

  A bundle of tentacles thrust through the hole and gripped the red, cooling edges. Steel creaked as the appendages pried the doors apart with agonizing slowness.

  Sakai pointed at the intrusion point. “Fire!”

  Deafening gunshots reverberated throughout the chamber as ground troops and scouts opened fire. The tentacles continued to pull, and the doors bent outward creating an opening roughly six feet wide.

  Through the rapid flash of gunfire, Sakai saw a face appear at the breach, a hideous, drooling countenance encased in green glass. A small tripod stepped through the narrow opening, taller than three men and crested by a translucent canopy. Bullets buffeted the glass until it cracked and shattered. The Martian machine fell forward into the base, spilling its mutilated pilot onto the floor.

  A second machine stepped into the gap. Its outstretched tentacles fired thin, focused heat rays that tore through the infantry, too small to consume them, but no less lethal than those of their larger counterparts. A Torch beam struck the tripod and blew the canopy apart, but the machine managed one final blast before it collapsed onto its fallen comrade.

  The emerald ray struck the Hermes scout’s fuel tank, and the tripod exploded. The concussion in the enclosed space was deafening, and Sakai was thrown to the ground.

  Lieutenant Lee grabbed Sakai’s hand and pulled him to his feet. “Captain Sakai, we have to go.”

  “No,” Sakai snarled.

  “Captain, please, this is foolishness,” Lee insisted. “We must fall back. Are these men’s lives worth your pride?”

  Sakai turned and watched the battle raging in front of him. The Martians had resumed prying the doors apart, and two more of the miniature tripods appeared in the gap, their heat rays flaring. It wasn’t a battle, he realized… but a bloodbath.

  Lee grabbed his commander’s shoulder. “Captain Sakai!”

  “Fall back,” Sakai muttered.

  “Captain?”

  “Fall back!” Sakai stood. “Fall back to the control room!”

  The men scrambled to obey, pushing and shouting. Sakai frowned at the shamefulness of it, but Lee was right, as much as it pained him to admit it even to himself.

  Sakai heard a weak cry and looked over his shoulder. A wounded Japanese infantryman, a mere boy, lay on the floor several feet away. The fleeing soldiers ran past him; none offered aid. His face and hands were badly burned, covered in raw, seeping wounds. If he had not cried out, Sakai would have assumed him to be dead.

  He knelt beside the boy. “Can you walk?”

  The boy grimaced and shook his head. Sakai lifted him under the arms and draped him over his shoulder. A scream escaped the boy’s lips, but he soon fell quiet.

  “We must hurry,” Lee said.

  Sakai grunted and followed while the boy slipped out of consciousness on his shoulder.

  *****

  Lee led the way up the stairs. Lights flickered, plunging them into brief periods of darkness. The building shook as Lee stepped into the control room and shouted, “Mr. Secretary!”

  Colonel Talbert met Lee halfway. The lieutenant gesticulated wildly to the colonel as he explained the situation. Two soldiers turned to bar the door, and Sakai yelled in protest. His words may have been strange to them, but the connotation was clear. As Sakai stepped over the threshold, he stared into the eyes of one of the men.

  “You stink of cowardice,” he said.

  The man trembled, his brain completely rewired by fear. Sakai grunted, repositioned the boy on his shoulders, and left the men behind to lock the door.

  The captain crossed the room slowly, weighed down by his burden. He placed the wounded soldier on the floor gently. Sakai knelt beside the boy and held the back of his head as he lifted his canteen to his lips. The boy drank and sputtered.

  Sakai called for a medic and raised the canteen to the boy’s lips a second time. This time, he took smaller sips and did not choke.

  “What is your name?” Sakai said in Japanese

  “O-Ochi,” the boy gasped. “Ochi Isamu.”

  “Where are you from, Ochi?”

  “Osaka.”

  Sakai grunted. “I hate Osaka.”

  Ochi laughed, a wet, grating sound that quickly turned to racking coughs.

  When the boy regained his composure, he said, “Am I going to die?”

  Sakai helped Ochi into a sitting position and rested his back against a nearby pillar. He drew his sidearm and held it out.

  “If you are going to die,” Sakai said, “it will not be on your back.”

  The boy took the gun and laid it across his lap. “Th-thank you, Captain.”

  Sakai nodded.

  *****

  Roosevelt watched Sakai and the boy. He shook his head. After all their years of planning, all their preparations, the Martians had still managed to catch humanity with its pants down.

  A medic knelt beside the boy and ushered Sakai aside. The captain wandered over to where Lee and Talbert stood, glancing over his shoulder when the boy cried out at the medic’s touch.

  No more, Roosevelt decided. One way or another, it ended here.

  Talbert exchanged brief words with Sakai and ran to Roosevelt’s side, flanked by two sentries. “We’ve been breached, sir! There’s a speedboat waiting to take you to safety. If you hurry, you can make it.”

  “No offense, Colonel,” Roosevelt said as he loaded a fresh magazine into his weapon, “but I’m in no mood for a boat ride.”

  “I understand, sir,” Talbert said. “Your orders?”

  “Die well.”

  A Martian wing soared past the building, and Roosevelt fired at it. Talbert joined in, along with the soldiers accompanying her. The saucer escaped, but three more descended on the base in a tight formation. Roosevelt aimed for the middle saucer and opened fire. Several other soldiers joined them, blasting at the screaming alien aircraft with automatic weapons and portable heat rays.

  Bullets tore through the saucers’ hulls, and the two flanking craft exploded. The blasts knocked the middle wing off course, and Roosevelt followed it. Gunfire ripped through the shrieking craft, and it exploded.

  “Good shooting, sir!” Talbert cheered.

  Roosevelt grunted in satisfaction. “Did you think I was just a pretty face?”

  Before Talbert could answer, another flying wing strafed the base, raking its heat ray down diagonally across the break in the wall. Roosevelt shielded his eyes as the blinding beam flashed dangerously close. Men screamed, and Roosevelt opened his eyes in time to see Talbert torn apart. Her blood splashed onto his face and arms.

  “Talbert?” Roosevelt stared at the place where she had stood. At least a dozen men and women lay dead or dying around him, those who weren’t instantly disintegrated by the heat ray. “Damn!”

  The flying wing turned to make another pass, and Roosevelt fired at the charging craft. The saucer exploded, but Roosevelt continued to shoot unt
il the weapon clicked empty. He gritted his teeth as six flying wings hovered in front of the fissure, followed by a seventh, and then an eighth that hovered directly in front of him.

  Roosevelt threw down his gun and glared at the saucer, which floated close enough he could have hit it with a rock. “Come on, you bastards!”

  The saucer’s heat ray glowed, and Roosevelt steeled himself for what was about to come.

  Suddenly, a bright, orange beam sliced through one of the saucers, then another blew apart the next, and another, and another, until all of the Martian wings were destroyed. Roosevelt shielded his face from the blasts, but when the flames died, he saw an immense shadow spreading over the base, and a squadron of Storm Crows, Ravens, and Valkyries descending from above, with a red fighter leading the charge, spewing a hail of bullets ahead of them.

  The Leviathan had arrived.

  “Bully,” Roosevelt cheered. “Bully!”

  Soldiers climbed up to the fissure to watch Richthofen’s squadron chase the flying wings. The Martians scattered, overrun by the larger force. Roosevelt picked up his weapon, loaded a fresh magazine, and turned to the haggard troops.

  “Okay, boys,” he said. “Let’s send those alien monsters back to hell!”

  The men raised their weapons and cheered, but one wounded soldier’s voice rose above the revelry.

  “But Mr. Secretary,” he said, “the Martians have breached the base. We can’t reach the tripod hangar.”

  Roosevelt scowled. It was true. The bastards had them cornered. His eyes fell on Sakai and Lee.

  “Captain Sakai,” he said, “I’ll need you to clear a path.”

  Sakai raised one eyebrow quizzically. “Sir?”

  “Do what you do best, Captain,” Roosevelt said.

  Sakai smiled. “Yes, Mr. Secretary.”

  Sakai motioned to Lieutenant Lee, and the two men walked toward the door.